Unit 13 · Close Reading Medinan Surahs

Surah 2 is called Al-Baqarah, The Cow. The name comes from a story inside it (2:67–73), in which the Children of Israel are told to sacrifice a cow and ask question after question about which cow. Surahs are usually named after a striking word or story in them, not after their main subject. With 286 ayahs, Al-Baqarah is the longest surah in the Qur’an. In most printed copies it fills the first two and a half of the thirty parts, or juz', that Muslims use to read the book across a month.

Muslim tradition places the surah in the Medinan period. In 622, according to the sira, the traditional biography, Muhammad and his followers left Mecca for the town of Yathrib, later called Medina. Scholars count the surahs revealed before that move as Meccan and those after it as Medinan. Al-Baqarah is usually described as one of the earliest Medinan surahs, though tradition says its verses came over several years, and some readers note that a few of its verses may be among the last revealed.

The difference in voice is easy to hear. Meccan surahs are often short, urgent and poetic. They warn, call to one God, and describe the last day. Medinan surahs are longer and address a community that now had land, a mosque, neighbors and enemies. Al-Baqarah opens with the phrase O ye who believe many times, and it gives rules: how to fast, how to write a contract, how to treat a divorced wife, when fighting is allowed. Historians note that this fits what the sira describes: a new community working out how to live together.

Al-Baqarah begins with three Arabic letters, Alif, Lam, Mim. Twenty-nine surahs open with letters like these, called the disconnected letters. Muslim commentators have offered many readings: that they are abbreviations, that they point to the Arabic alphabet the Qur’an is built from, or that their meaning is known only to God. Most classical commentators, including al-Tabari, list several views and do not pick one. Modern scholars have added theories, but no reading has won general agreement.

The second ayah makes a claim about the book. In Pickthall’s translation: This is the Scripture whereof there is no doubt, a guidance unto those who ward off (evil). The Arabic word Pickthall renders as ward off evil is taqwa, often translated as God-consciousness or mindfulness. The verse does not argue that the book is true; it states it and moves on. Readers who study rhetoric note that this is a common Qur’anic move: the text speaks with authority and expects assent.

Verses 3 through 20 then describe three groups. First come those who believe, pray and give: the text says guidance is for them. Then come those who reject the message, of whom the surah says warning will not help. Then, at greater length, come people who say they believe but do not: the hypocrites, in Arabic munafiqun. The surah gives them two parables, a man who lights a fire and loses its light, and travelers caught in a storm. Commentators read these verses as a portrait of Medina’s mixed population, where the new community lived beside those who had joined it half-heartedly.

Many people meet Qur’an verses one at a time, on a poster, in a speech or on a screen. Reading a surah in sequence is different. Scholars who study the structure of the Qur’an, from medieval commentators to modern readers, have argued that Al-Baqarah has a plan. The details differ, but a common outline runs like this: an opening on the book and its listeners (1–39), the Children of Israel and their covenant (40–123), Ibrahim (Abraham) and the Ka’bah (124–152), law for the new community (153–283), and a closing statement of faith and prayer (284–286).

Read this way, the middle of the surah makes sense. Before the text tells the believers how to pray, fast and fight, it tells them how an earlier people received a law and what happened when they kept or broke it. Then it tells how Ibrahim, whom the Qur’an calls neither Jew nor Christian but one who submitted to God, built the Ka’bah in Mecca. Only after that does the surah announce a new direction for prayer and a new set of rules. The story explains the law.

Some modern scholars, such as those who study ring composition, argue that the surah’s parts mirror each other, with the change of qibla near the center. Others are cautious and say readers should not force a pattern onto a text gathered from several years of revelation. Both groups agree on one thing: to understand a verse of Al-Baqarah, read the verses around it. This chapter follows that rule.

In 2:30–39 the surah tells of Adam. In Pickthall’s translation, God says to the angels: Lo! I am about to place a viceroy in the earth. The Arabic word is khalifah, one who stands in for another, later used for the rulers of the Muslim community. The angels ask why God would place one who will do harm and shed blood, while they praise God. God answers that He knows what they do not.

Then God teaches Adam the names of all things and asks the angels to name them. They cannot; Adam can. The angels are told to bow to Adam, and all do except Iblis, who refuses. The Qur’an elsewhere says Iblis was of the jinn and was too proud to bow to a being made of clay. Adam and his wife live in the Garden, are told not to approach one tree, are misled by Satan, and are sent down to earth. Then, the surah says, Adam received words from his Lord and God relented toward him.

Readers of the Bible will notice both likeness and difference. Genesis 2–3 also has a garden, a forbidden tree and an expulsion. But the Qur’an’s telling has no serpent, no talking of the tree of knowledge, and it names no woman as the first to eat. Most Muslim commentators, from al-Tabari on, stress that Adam repented and was forgiven, and that the Qur’an teaches no inherited guilt. Christian readers of Genesis, by contrast, have often read the story as the beginning of a fallen condition. Comparing the two texts shows how each tradition builds a different teaching from a shared story.

From verse 40 to about verse 123, the surah addresses the Children of Israel, Banu Isra’il. The passage opens with a reminder of favor: remember My favor that I bestowed on you, and keep your covenant with Me. It then retells episodes known from the Hebrew Bible: rescue from Pharaoh, the parting of the sea, manna and quails, water from the rock, the golden calf, and Musa (Moses) receiving the Book. The surah’s own name comes from this stretch, in the story of the cow the people were told to sacrifice.

The tone is mixed. The text calls Israel a people God preferred above all creatures (2:47) and, in the same breath, lists moments when the people broke their covenant, their binding agreement with God. It says some of them changed the words of scripture, killed prophets, or claimed the fire would touch them only a few days. Historians note that the surah is speaking, according to the sira, at a time when the Muslim community in Medina lived beside Jewish tribes who had not accepted Muhammad’s claim. The argument is with those neighbors.

How should a reader handle this? Muslim commentators have long said the passage warns Muslims as much as anyone: a people given a book can lose its way. Modern scholars, Muslim and non-Muslim, stress that the verses address particular groups in a particular dispute, not every Jew in every time, and they point to 2:62, which says that Jews, Christians and Sabians who believe in God and the last day and do right will have their reward. Reading the whole stretch, rather than a single verse, is the only fair way to hear it.

Verses 124–141 tell of Ibrahim (Abraham). He is tested and made a leader for people. With his son Isma’il (Ishmael) he raises the foundations of the House, the Ka’bah in Mecca, and prays that a messenger will rise from his descendants. The surah then says Ibrahim was not a Jew or a Christian but a hanif, one who turned from idols to God alone, and that his religion is the religion the Qur’an calls people to. Muslims call the faith of Ibrahim the root of their own.

Then comes one of the few events in the surah that historians can date fairly well. According to the sira, for about sixteen or seventeen months after the move to Medina, Muslims prayed facing Jerusalem, the direction Jews prayed. In about 624, verses 142–150 announced a new qibla, the direction of prayer: the Sacred Mosque in Mecca. In Pickthall’s rendering God says He has seen the Prophet turning his face to the sky and will now turn him toward a qibla that pleases him.

Commentators read the change several ways. Some say it answered the Prophet’s own wish to face the House of his ancestor Ibrahim. Some see it as a mark of a community now distinct from its Jewish neighbors, who, the surah notes, would argue about it. The text itself gives a reason in 2:143: the earlier qibla was set to show who would follow the Messenger. Verse 177 adds that righteousness is not in facing east or west, but in faith, giving, prayer and keeping one’s word. The direction matters; the surah also says it is not the point.

Verses 183–187 set out fasting. In Pickthall’s translation: O ye who believe! Fasting is prescribed for you, even as it was prescribed for those before you, that ye may ward off (evil). The verse ties the practice to earlier communities, which commentators take to include Jews and Christians. Verse 185 names the month: Ramadan, in which the Qur’an was sent down. Those who are sick or traveling may make up the days later. Verse 187 sets the hours, from the first light of dawn until night, and permits eating and marital relations at night.

Muslims read these verses every year. The fast, sawm, is one of the five practices Sunni tradition calls the pillars of Islam. In Chicago, as in every city with Muslim residents, mosques hold evening meals in Ramadan and the schedule of the fast shifts with the seasons, since the Islamic calendar is lunar and moves about eleven days earlier each solar year. Students who fast during the school day are a familiar sight in Illinois public schools.

Verses 196–203 turn to hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, and to umrah, the lesser visit. The surah gives practical rules: complete the rites, offer what animal you can, do not shave the head until the offering reaches its place, and if you cannot go, fast or feed the poor instead. It also warns against quarreling on the road and tells pilgrims to remember God at the places the rites move through. Historians note that pilgrimage to Mecca existed before Islam; the Qur’an, they say, kept the journey and refocused it on the one God and on Ibrahim.

Verses 221–242 deal with marriage and divorce. The surah sets a waiting period, iddah, of three monthly cycles after a divorce, during which a wife stays in the home and may be taken back. It limits a husband to two revocable divorces, then a final one. It says a husband must not hold a wife to harm her, tells both sides to part with kindness, and provides for a divorced woman and for nursing mothers. Commentators note that in the Arabia the sira describes, these rules set limits where there had been few. Modern readers, including Muslim women scholars, debate how the rules apply today; the law schools of Islam have differed on details for centuries.

Verse 275 forbids riba, usually translated usury or interest, and contrasts it with trade, which is allowed. Verses 276–281 warn those who take riba and tell lenders to give a struggling debtor time, or to forgive the debt as charity. How riba applies to modern banking is a live debate: some Muslim scholars hold that all bank interest is riba, others that only exploitative rates are, and an industry of Islamic finance has grown up around the question.

Verse 282 is the longest single ayah in the Qur’an. It tells believers who contract a debt for a fixed term to write it down, to have a scribe write fairly, to have the debtor dictate, and to call two witnesses. If two men are not available, it says, then one man and two women, so that if one forgets the other may remind her. This clause has been read in many ways: classical jurists built rules of testimony on it, while many modern scholars argue it addresses the commercial experience of women in seventh-century Arabia, not their capacity. The verse ends by saying that writing is fairer and reduces doubt.

Verses 190–194 speak of fighting. In Pickthall’s rendering, believers are told to fight in the way of God those who fight them, but not to begin hostilities, for God does not love aggressors. The verses allow fighting near the Sacred Mosque only if the other side fights there first, tell believers to stop if the other side stops, and say that fighting should continue until there is no more fitnah, persecution, and religion is for God. Verse 216 says fighting is ordained though it is hateful to the believers.

The sira places these verses after the Muslims’ move to Medina, when they were at war with the Meccan clans who had driven them out. The Battle of Badr, in about 624, is the first major clash tradition records. Verse 217 addresses an incident in the sacred months and 2:244–246 recall how the Israelites asked for a king to fight for them. Historians note that the verses read as responses to a conflict already underway, with the Sacred Mosque still in Meccan hands.

Readers differ over scope. Most classical jurists read the limits, do not begin hostilities and stop when they stop, as binding and built laws of war on them: no killing of noncombatants, no breaking of treaties. A minority of medieval scholars held that later verses in Surah 9 widened permission; most mainstream scholars, past and present, deny this and say the Surah 9 verses also address specific enemies. Modern Muslim scholars almost without exception read 2:190 as the governing verse: fighting is defensive and bounded. This course reports the readings; the debate belongs to the tradition.

Verse 255 is called Ayat al-Kursi, the Throne Verse, from the word kursi, throne or footstool, near its end. Muslims recite it after daily prayers, before sleep, and over the sick; many hadith reports, paraphrased, call it the greatest verse in the Qur’an. It hangs on the walls of homes and shops from Chicago to Jakarta, often in calligraphy. It is one of the first long verses Muslim children memorize.

The verse begins with the core of Muslim belief, tawhid, the oneness of God: Allah, there is no God save Him. It goes on to describe God as living and self-sustaining, never overtaken by slumber or sleep, owner of all in the heavens and the earth. No one intercedes with Him except by His leave. He knows what lies before and behind His creatures, while they grasp only what He wills of His knowledge. His throne, or kursi, extends over the heavens and the earth, and preserving them does not tire Him. He is the Sublime, the Tremendous.

Commentators have paused on the word kursi. Some early readers took it as a literal footstool before God’s greater throne, the arsh; others, including many later theologians, read it as a figure for God’s knowledge or dominion. Sufi writers have read the verse as a meditation on God’s presence. The verse’s place is also noticed: it sits just before no compulsion in religion. Some readers see a pairing, a statement of who God is followed by a statement that faith in Him cannot be forced.

Verse 256, in Pickthall’s translation, begins: There is no compulsion in religion. The right direction is henceforth distinct from error. It goes on to say that whoever rejects false gods and believes in God has grasped a firm handhold that will not break. The Arabic word for compulsion is ikrah, forcing. The verse follows the Throne Verse and comes near the end of the surah’s long section of laws.

Classical commentators asked what occasion produced it. Al-Tabari, writing in about 900, collected several reports. In one, women of the Ansar, the Medinan helpers, had vowed before Islam to raise a child among the Jewish tribe of Banu Nadir if the child lived; when that tribe was expelled, some fathers wanted to force those children to become Muslim, and the verse forbade it. Another report has a man wanting to compel his two sons who had become Christian. Al-Tabari chose the reading that the verse forbids forcing the People of the Book and others who pay the poll tax. A few early scholars held that the verse was abrogated, that is, set aside, by later verses commanding fighting. Most rejected that view; Ibn Kathir, in the fourteenth century, wrote that no one is to be forced into Islam because its proofs are clear.

Modern readers have made the verse central. Muslim scholars in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries cite it in arguments for religious freedom and against forced conversion, and many national constitutions in Muslim-majority countries echo it. Critics note that some classical jurists still punished leaving Islam, and ask how that squares with the verse; Muslim scholars answer in different ways, some defending the old rule, many arguing that it rested on treason in wartime, not on belief. The verse itself is short. What readers bring to it, and which other verses they read it beside, decides what they hear.

The surah closes in verses 284–286. Verse 285 states what the Messenger and the believers accept: God, His angels, His books and His messengers, making no distinction between any of His messengers. Muslim readers point out that this line names the same list found in the earliest creeds of Islam. Verse 286 then turns into a prayer, spoken in the voice of the community: Our Lord, do not take us to task if we forget or err; do not lay on us a burden like the one laid on those before us; do not load us with more than we can bear; pardon us, forgive us, have mercy on us; You are our Protector, so help us against the people who reject faith.

The prayer begins with a principle many Muslims quote: God does not burden a soul beyond its capacity. Jurists have built on it when discussing hardship, illness and travel, the same cases the fasting verses allowed for. Commentators also notice the phrase about a burden laid on those before us. Most read it as a reference back to the Children of Israel, addressed earlier in the surah, and to the heavier law the Qur’an says they carried. The end of the surah answers its middle.

Hadith reports, paraphrased, say the Prophet called the last two verses of Al-Baqarah a special gift and recommended reciting them at night. Many Muslims still do. For a student reading in sequence, the ending does something else. A surah that opened with three letters and a claim about the book ends with a community speaking in the first person to God. The text has moved from address to response.

Surah 4 is called An-Nisa, The Women, because so much of it concerns marriage, family and the rights of women and orphans. It has 176 ayahs and is the fourth-longest surah. Muslim tradition places it in Medina, with many verses dated to the years after the Battle of Uhud in about 625, when the community had lost men in battle and had many widows and orphans to provide for. Historians find that setting plausible: the surah’s first ten verses are about orphans’ property.

The surah opens by addressing all people, reminding them that they were created from a single soul. It then tells guardians to hand orphans their property when they come of age, not to swap good property for bad, and not to consume it wrongfully. Verse 10 warns that those who eat up orphans’ wealth are eating fire. Commentators note that in the Arabia the sira describes, the strong often took what belonged to the weak, and these verses set limits.

Verses 11 and 12 give fixed inheritance shares. A son receives the share of two daughters; parents each receive one-sixth if the deceased has a child; a wife receives one-eighth if there are children and one-quarter if not; a husband one-quarter or one-half. Debts and bequests come first. Muslim jurists built a whole science, the fara'id, on these verses. Historians and many Muslim scholars note that giving daughters and wives fixed shares was a change in a society where women often inherited nothing. Modern Muslim writers debate the two-to-one ratio; some tie it to the husband’s duty to support the family, others argue for rereading it, and the law schools have differed on details for centuries.

Verse 4:3 is the Qur’an’s main verse on the number of wives. It says that if a guardian fears he cannot deal justly with orphans, he may marry women of his choice, two, three or four, but if he fears he cannot treat them justly, then one. Commentators disagree about the link to orphans; some say the verse addresses guardians tempted to marry orphan girls for their wealth. Verse 129 adds that a man will not be able to deal equally between wives however he tries. Some modern scholars read 4:3 and 4:129 together as pointing toward one wife; classical jurists read 4:3 as permission with conditions.

Verse 4:34 is the most debated. It says men are qawwamun over women, a word Pickthall renders as in charge of, because of what God has given some over others and because men spend their wealth. It calls righteous women devoutly obedient. It then says that if a husband fears nushuz, a word usually translated as rebellion or ill-conduct, he should admonish, then leave the bed, then, in the Arabic, idribuhunna, usually translated strike them. The verse ends by saying that if they obey, no further way is to be sought against them.

Readers have handled this verse in many ways. Classical jurists set limits: hadith reports, paraphrased, say any striking must not cause harm, and many jurists said it was better not to strike at all. Modern Muslim scholars go further. Some read the Arabic verb in another of its meanings, to separate or to go away. Some argue the verse describes seventh-century Arabian households, not a rule for all time. Others keep the traditional reading and stress the limits. Muslim women scholars have written extensively on the verse since the 1990s. This course reports these readings; the disagreement is real and belongs to the tradition.

Verse 4:135 opens: O ye who believe! Be ye staunch in justice, witnesses for Allah, even though it be against yourselves or (your) parents or (your) kindred. That is Pickthall’s rendering. The verse goes on: whether the case is a rich man’s or a poor man’s, God is nearer to both; so do not follow passion lest you swerve. The Arabic word for justice here is qist, fair dealing, a word the Qur’an uses often. Muslim readers count the verse among the book’s central statements on ethics, and it appears on courthouse walls and law-school seals in more than one country.

The verse is often read with a report about its occasion, collected by commentators: a dispute in Medina in which a Muslim accused a Jewish neighbor of theft, and the Prophet, according to the report, was warned by revelation not to side with his own community against the truth. The surah tells the story in 4:105–112 in general terms. Whether or not the report is exact, historians note that the verse addresses a community tempted to favor its own, and tells it not to.

The verse belongs to a cluster. Verse 4:58 tells believers to return trusts to their owners and to judge between people with justice. Verse 5:8, in the next surah, says that hatred of a people must not make you unjust. Jurists cite these verses for the rules of testimony: a witness must tell the truth even when it hurts. Modern Muslim writers cite them in debates about human rights. A student writing about justice in the Qur’an could do worse than to start with these three verses and their contexts.

Surah 5, Al-Ma'idah, The Table Spread, has 120 ayahs. Its name comes from a story near its end (5:112–115) in which the disciples of Isa (Jesus) ask for a table of food to be sent from heaven. Muslim tradition counts it among the last surahs revealed, and many commentators place its opening verses at the Prophet’s farewell pilgrimage in about 632. It opens with a command: O ye who believe! Fulfill your undertakings. Keeping agreements is a thread through the whole surah.

Verse 3 lists forbidden foods: carrion, blood, pork, and animals dedicated to anything other than God, with an exception for one forced by hunger. In the middle of the same verse comes a line Muslims hold dear: This day have I perfected your religion for you and completed My favor unto you, and have chosen for you as religion al-Islam, in Pickthall’s words. Many commentators say this line came on the day of Arafat during the farewell pilgrimage; Shia commentators also connect nearby verses to the Prophet’s words at Ghadir Khumm about Ali, a reading Sunni commentators do not share.

Verse 5 then widens the table. The food of those who received the Book before you, it says, is lawful for you, and your food is lawful for them; and Muslim men may marry chaste women from among them. The phrase People of the Book, Ahl al-Kitab, means Jews and Christians, and by extension others with scriptures. Jurists built rules on this verse for kosher and other meat, for interfaith marriage and for shared meals. Muslims in Chicago who buy meat marked halal, permitted, or who eat with Jewish or Christian neighbors, are living inside these two verses.

Verse 5:32 follows the story of Adam’s two sons, told in 5:27–31. One son kills the other, then learns from a raven how to bury him. The Qur’an does not name the sons; Muslim tradition calls them Habil and Qabil, the Bible’s Abel and Cain. Then comes verse 32, in Pickthall’s rendering: For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.

Two things in the verse draw comment. First, it says the decree was given to the Children of Israel. Scholars have long noticed that the Mishnah, the early rabbinic code, contains a close parallel in tractate Sanhedrin 4:5, which says that one who destroys a single life is as if he destroyed a whole world, and one who saves a single life is as if he saved a whole world. Muslim commentators read the Qur’an as confirming an earlier teaching; historians read the parallel as evidence of shared traditions in late-antique Arabia.

Second, the verse has two exceptions: for other than manslaughter, that is, as punishment for murder, and corruption in the earth. The next verse, 5:33, sets severe punishments for those who wage war against God and His Messenger and spread corruption. Classical jurists read 5:33 as the law against armed brigandage, hirabah. Modern Muslim scholars cite 5:32 against terrorism and note that those who kill civilians fall under the corruption the verse condemns, not outside it. Readers who quote only the first half of the verse, or only the exceptions, each miss part of it.

Al-Ma’idah speaks about Jews and Christians more than any other surah, and not in one voice. Verses 44–47 say the Torah and the Gospel contain guidance and light and tell each people to judge by what God sent down to them. Verse 51 tells believers not to take Jews and Christians as awliya, a word translated as friends, allies or protectors. Verse 69 says Jews, Sabians and Christians who believe in God and the last day and do right have nothing to fear. Verse 82 says those nearest in affection to the believers are those who say We are Christians, because among them are priests and monks who are not proud.

Commentators handle these verses by asking their occasions. Many, from al-Tabari on, tie 5:51 to political alliances during the conflicts of Medina, when some Muslims kept protective pacts with tribes at war with the community; on this reading the verse concerns wartime loyalty, not friendship in general. Others read it more broadly. Modern Muslim scholars generally stress the first reading and point to 60:8, which says God does not forbid kindness and fairness to those who have not fought the believers over religion.

Verse 48 gathers the surah’s thinking. In Pickthall’s rendering: For each We have appointed a divine law and a traced-out way. Had Allah willed He could have made you one community. But that He may try you by that which He hath given you (He hath made you as ye are). So vie one with another in good works. Classical commentators mostly read the verse as describing the succession of laws, each people in its time; many modern readers, Muslim and not, read it as the Qur’an’s own account of religious diversity, difference as a test and a call to compete in good. Both readings have the text on their side; the second has become common at interfaith gatherings.

Surah 49, Al-Hujurat, The Private Rooms, has eighteen ayahs. The name comes from verse 4, which rebukes people who shouted to the Prophet from outside the rooms where his wives lived. Muslim tradition dates the surah to about 630, the ninth year after the move to Medina, when delegations from Arabian tribes were arriving to make terms. Historians accept that setting as consistent with the surah’s concerns: how a growing and mixed community should behave.

The first verses set manners toward the Prophet: do not raise your voices above his, do not shout for him from outside. Verse 6 gives a rule that Muslim ethicists quote often: if a wrongdoer brings you news, check it, lest you harm a people in ignorance. Verses 9 and 10 turn to conflict inside the community: if two groups of believers fight, make peace between them, and if one goes on wronging the other, fight the one that wrongs until it returns; the believers are brothers, so make peace between your brothers.

Verses 11 and 12 are about everyday harm. Do not let a people mock another people, who may be better than they; do not let women mock women; do not insult one another or use offensive nicknames. Avoid much suspicion, for some suspicion is a sin. Do not spy. Do not backbite: would one of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? The image is meant to disgust. Teachers in Muslim schools use these two verses for lessons on bullying, and their plain language is one reason the surah is a favorite for memorization.

Verse 13 changes address. The surah has been speaking to the believers; now it says O mankind. In Pickthall’s translation: We have created you male and female, and have made you nations and tribes that ye may know one another. Lo! the noblest of you, in the sight of Allah, is the best in conduct. The Arabic behind best in conduct is atqakum, the one with most taqwa, mindfulness of God. The verse ends: God is Knower, Aware.

Commentators give several occasion reports. One says that at the conquest of Mecca in about 630, Bilal, a formerly enslaved Black companion, gave the call to prayer from the roof of the Ka’bah, and some Meccan nobles objected; the verse answered them. Another concerns a marriage proposal refused because of the suitor’s lineage. Al-Tabari and later commentators note that the reports differ, and they draw the same lesson from all of them: in the Qur’an’s view, lineage, one’s descent and tribe, confers no rank. Hadith reports, paraphrased, have the Prophet saying in his farewell sermon that no Arab is superior to a non-Arab, nor a non-Arab to an Arab, except by taqwa.

The verse has a long afterlife. Sufi writers read knowing one another as a stage on the path to knowing God. Modern Muslim scholars cite it against racism and tribalism, and it was quoted during the American civil rights era by Muslim leaders, including Malcolm X after his pilgrimage in 1964. It appears at interfaith gatherings in Chicago and on the walls of Islamic schools in Illinois. Some readers caution that the verse is about knowing, not agreeing: it does not say all religions are the same, and the surah around it is written for a particular community. Both points are in the text.

Every lesson in this chapter has leaned on two tools. The first is asbab al-nuzul, the occasions of revelation: reports, passed down and collected by scholars such as al-Wahidi in the eleventh century, about the event a verse answered. The second is the sira, the traditional life of the Prophet, which gives the order of events in Medina: the arrival in 622, Badr in about 624, Uhud in about 625, the treaty with Mecca at Hudaybiyyah in about 628, the conquest of Mecca in about 630, the delegations, and the farewell pilgrimage in about 632.

Historians use both with care. The sira in the form we have was written down in the eighth and ninth centuries, more than a hundred years after the events. Occasion reports often conflict, as we saw for 49:13, and some were plainly guesses. Modern scholars, Muslim and non-Muslim, agree that the Qur’an itself is the earliest source, and that the reports help most when several independent ones agree, or when the verse’s own wording supports them. Where reports disagree, this course has said so.

Why does it matter? Because the three surahs in this chapter contain the verses most often quoted about other faiths, about women and about violence, both by Muslims and by critics of Islam. A verse read without its occasion can be made to say almost anything. A verse read with its occasion, its neighbors and the rest of the book is harder to twist. That is the argument Muslim commentators made a thousand years ago, and it is the argument historians make today, for different reasons.

Put the verses side by side. 2:62 and 5:69 say Jews, Christians and Sabians who believe in God and the last day and do right have their reward. 2:256 says there is no compulsion in religion. 5:48 says God could have made all people one community. 49:13 says nations and tribes exist to know one another. Against these stand 5:51 on not taking Jews and Christians as awliya, 3:85 on no religion other than islam being accepted, and the fighting verses of Surah 9. Every serious reader has to say how these fit together.

Classical commentators mostly used two tools. One was abrogation, naskh: a later verse can set aside an earlier ruling. Some applied it widely, holding that the Surah 9 verses replaced the gentler ones; many applied it narrowly or not at all. The other was specification: reading a verse as about the people it was revealed about. Ibn Kathir, for example, read 2:62 as about people before Muhammad’s time, while al-Tabari recorded readings on both sides. Most classical readers also assumed a world of Muslim rule with protected non-Muslim communities, the dhimma system, and read the verses in that light.

Modern Muslim scholars, writing in a world of nation-states and religious pluralism, have shifted emphasis. Many argue that abrogation was overused and that the fighting verses address specific enemies. Many read 5:48 and 49:13 as the Qur’an’s own charter for living among other faiths. Some, in the pluralist camp, go further and read 2:62 as promising reward to righteous Jews and Christians today; others hold the older line that the verse’s promise ended with Muhammad’s coming. Non-Muslim historians add a third voice, describing the seventh-century setting and declining to say which reading is right. This course does the same.