Tafsīr al-Jalālayn, by Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī and Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 864 AH / 1459 CE and 911 AH / 1505 CE). The two Jalāls’ gloss, a sentence or two to a verse, which became the handbook commentary of the Muslim world.
The complete commentary on The family of ʿImrān (3:33-64), covering 3:33 to 3:64.
On 3:33
Truly God chose (3:33), selected, Adam and Noah and the House of Abraham and the House of ʿImrān, meaning the two of them themselves, above the worlds, by making the prophets of their progeny.
On 3:34
Progeny, one of them from (3:34), the offspring of, another of them; and God is Hearing, Knowing.
On 3:35
Remember when the wife of ʿImrān said (3:35) – she was Ḥannah – when she had grown old and longed for a child, and so prayed to God, and then felt that she was with child: O my Lord, truly I have vowed that I shall make to You what is in my womb, consecrated, set free, devoted wholly, clear of the preoccupations of this world, for the service of Your Holy House; so accept it from me. Truly You are the Hearing of supplication, the Knowing of intentions. And ʿImrān died while she was pregnant.
On 3:36
And when she gave birth to her (3:36), bearing her as a girl, when she had been hoping it would be a boy, since none but boys were consecrated, she said, by way of excuse, My Lord, I have given birth to a female – and God knows best, that is, He is well aware of, what she gave birth to: a parenthetical clause from His speech, Exalted; and in one reading with the tāʾ vowelled with ḍamma1 – and the male that I asked for is not like the female that I have been given, because he is intended for service, whereas she is not fit for it owing to her weakness, her being ʿawra (something to be screened from view), and what befalls her of menstruation and the like; and I have named her Mary, and I commend her to Your protection, and her offspring, her children, from Satan the accursed, the outcast. And in the ḥadīth2.
On 3:37
So her Lord accepted her (3:37), that is, He accepted Mary from her mother, with a goodly acceptance, and made her grow with a goodly growth: He brought her up with a goodly constitution, so that she grew in a day as a newborn grows in a year. Her mother brought her to the rabbis, the custodians of the Holy House (Bayt al-Maqdis), and said: “Here, take this one who was vowed.” They competed for her, because she was the daughter of their leader (imām). Zachariah said: “I have the better right to her, because her maternal aunt is with me.” They said: “No, not until we cast lots.” So they set off – they were twenty-nine – to the river Jordan and cast in their pens, agreeing that the one whose pen held firm in the water and rose to the surface would have the better right to her. Zachariah’s pen held firm, so he took her and built for her a chamber in the sanctuary (masjid) with a ladder, which none but he climbed up to her. He would bring her her food, her drink and her oil, and he would find with her the fruit of summer in winter and the fruit of winter in summer, as He, Exalted, said: and Zachariah took charge of her, he took her into his care; and in one reading with the doubled consonant (kaffalahā) and with “Zachariah” in the accusative, both in its lengthened form (Zakariyyāʾ) and in its shortened form (Zakariyyā), the agent being God3. Whenever Zachariah entered upon her in the sanctuary (miḥrāb), the chamber, which is the noblest of sitting-places, he found provision with her. He said: O Mary, whence, from where, have you this? She said – while she was still small – It is from God: He brings it to me from Paradise. Truly God provides for whom He wills without reckoning: ample provision, with no account to render.
On 3:38
There (3:38), that is, when Zachariah saw that, and knew that the One who is able to bring a thing outside its season is able to bring a child in old age – and the people of his house had died out – Zachariah called upon his Lord, when he entered the sanctuary to pray in the depth of the night. He said: My Lord, grant me from Yourself, from Your presence, a goodly offspring, a righteous child; truly You are the Hearer, the Answerer, of supplication.
On 3:39
Then the angels called to him (3:39), that is, Gabriel, while he was standing praying in the sanctuary, that is, the place of worship, that, that is, “saying that”; and in one reading with kasra (inna), with “saying” understood: God gives you good tidings – read with the doubled consonant (yubashshiruka) and without it (yabshuruka) – of John, confirming a Word that is from God, that is, Jesus, that he is the Spirit of God; he was named “a Word” because he was created by the word “Be”; and a lord, one who is followed, and chaste, kept away from women, and a prophet from among the righteous. It is related that he never committed a sin nor ever contemplated one.
On 3:40
He said: My Lord, how (3:40), in what way, shall I have a boy, a child, when old age has overtaken me, that is, I have reached the limit of age, a hundred and twenty years, and my wife is barren, she having reached ninety-eight years? He said: The matter is so, God’s creating a boy from the two of you; God does what He wills: nothing renders Him incapable of it. And in order to make manifest this tremendous power, he was inspired to ask the question so that it might be answered with this; and because his soul yearned for the speedy coming of what he had been given tidings of.
On 3:41
He said: My Lord, appoint for me a sign (3:41), that is, a token of my wife’s pregnancy. He said: Your sign is that you shall not speak to people: [your sign] for it is that you shall not speak to people, that is, that you refrain from speaking to them – unlike the remembrance of God, Exalted – for three days, that is, together with their nights, except by signal, by gesture; and remember your Lord much, and glorify, pray, in the evening and the early morning, the latter parts of the day and its first parts.
On 3:42
And (3:42) remember when the angels said, that is, Gabriel, O Mary, truly God has chosen you, selected you, and purified you from the touch of men, and chosen you above the women of the worlds, that is, the people of your time.
On 3:43
O Mary, be devoutly obedient to your Lord (3:43), obey Him, and prostrate and bow with those who bow, that is, pray with those who pray.
On 3:44
That (3:44), what has been mentioned of the affair of Zachariah and Mary, is of the tidings of the unseen, the reports of what was hidden from you, which We reveal to you, O Muḥammad; and you were not with them when they cast their pens into the water, drawing lots so that it might become clear to them which of them should take charge of, should bring up, Mary; nor were you with them when they disputed over her guardianship, such that you would know that and report it; rather, you knew it only by way of revelation.
On 3:45
Remember when the angels said (3:45), that is, Gabriel, O Mary, truly God gives you good tidings of a Word from Him, that is, a son, whose name is the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary. He addressed her attributing him to her, to draw attention to the fact that she would bear him without a father, since the custom with men is that they are attributed to their fathers; honoured, possessed of standing, in this world, through prophethood, and the Hereafter, through intercession and the highest degrees, and one of those brought near to God.
On 3:46
And he shall speak to people in the cradle (3:46), that is, as an infant, before the time of speech, and in maturity, and shall be one of the righteous.
On 3:47
She said: My Lord, how (3:47), in what way, shall I have a child when no man has touched me, whether by marriage or otherwise? He said: The matter is so, God’s creating a child from you without a father; God creates what He wills. When He decrees a matter, wills to create it, He only says to it “Be”, and it is, that is, and so it comes to be.
On 3:48
And He will teach him (3:48) – read with nūn (nuʿallimuhu, “We will teach him”) and with yāʾ (yuʿallimuhu) – the Book, writing, and wisdom, and the Torah and the Gospel.
On 3:49
And (3:49) We shall make him a messenger to the Children of Israel, in childhood or after reaching maturity. So Gabriel breathed into the opening of her shift and she conceived, and there befell her what is mentioned in Sūrat Maryam (19:16-34). When God sent him to the Children of Israel he said to them: I am God’s messenger to you, in that, that is, “by the fact that”, I have come to you with a sign, a token of my truthfulness, from your Lord; it is that I – in one reading with kasra (innī), as a fresh sentence – create, fashion, for you out of clay the likeness of a bird, something like its form – the kāf4 being a noun standing as the object – then I breathe into it, the pronoun referring to the kāf, and it becomes a bird – in one reading ṭāʾiran – by God’s leave, by His will. So he created for them the bat, because it is the most perfectly formed of birds, and it would fly while they watched it, and when it passed out of their sight it would fall down dead. And I heal, I cure, the one born blind, who was born sightless, and the leper – these two are singled out for mention because they are two diseases that defeat the physician, and his mission fell in the age of medicine; and he would heal fifty thousand in a day by supplication, on condition of belief – and I bring the dead to life, by God’s leave: He repeated it so as to negate any illusion of divinity in him. So he brought to life ʿĀzar, a friend of his, and the old woman’s son, and the tax-collector’s daughter, and they lived on and had children born to them; and Shem son of Noah, who died on the spot. And I inform you of what you eat and what you store up, hide away, in your houses, of what I have not witnessed; he would tell a person what he had eaten and what he would eat afterwards. Truly in that which has been mentioned is a sign for you, if you are believers.
On 3:50
And (3:50) I have come to you confirming what was before me, prior to me, of the Torah, and to make lawful to you some of what was forbidden to you in it. So he made lawful to them such fish and birds as have no spur or spine5; and it was said that he made all of it lawful, so that “some” has the sense of “all”. And I have come to you with a sign from your Lord: he repeated it for emphasis and in order to build upon it: so fear God and obey me in what I command you of affirming God’s oneness and obeying Him.
On 3:51
Truly God is my Lord and your Lord, so worship Him. This (3:51), which I command you, is a path, a way, that is straight. But they called him a liar and did not believe in him.
On 3:52
And when Jesus perceived (3:52), came to know, disbelief from them, and they wished to kill him, he said: Who will be my helpers, my supporters, going towards God, that I may aid His religion? The disciples said: We are God’s helpers, the supporters of His religion. They were the chosen companions of Jesus, the first to believe in him, and they were twelve men; [the name is] from al-ḥawar, which is pure whiteness; and it was said that they were fullers who whitened (yuḥawwirūn) garments, that is, bleached them. We believe, we have faith, in God; and bear witness, O Jesus, that we are submitters.
On 3:53
Our Lord, we believe in what You have sent down (3:53) of the Gospel, and we follow the Messenger, Jesus; so write us down with those who bear witness to You with respect to Your oneness and to Your Messenger with respect to his truthfulness.
On 3:54
He, Exalted, said: And they schemed (3:54), that is, the disbelievers of the Children of Israel against Jesus, when they set over him someone to kill him by stealth; and God schemed against them, in that He cast the likeness of Jesus upon the one who intended to kill him, so that they killed him, and He raised Jesus to heaven; and God is the best of schemers, the most knowing of them in it.
On 3:55
Remember when God said: O Jesus, I am taking you (3:55), seizing you, and raising you to Me from this world without death, and purifying you, removing you far, from those who disbelieve, and placing those who follow you, who affirm your prophethood, of the Muslims and the Christians, above those who disbelieve, namely the Jews, prevailing over them by argument and by the sword, until the Day of Resurrection. Then to Me is your return, and I shall judge between you concerning that over which you used to differ in the matter of religion.
On 3:56
As for those who disbelieve, I shall punish them with a severe punishment in this world (3:56), through killing, captivity and the poll-tax (jizya), and the Hereafter, through the Fire; and they shall have no helpers to protect them from it.
On 3:57
And as for those who believe and do righteous deeds, He will pay them in full (3:57) – read with yāʾ (yuwaffīhim) and with nūn (nuwaffīhim, “We will pay them in full”) – their rewards; and God does not love the wrongdoers, that is, He will punish them. It is related that God, Exalted, sent to him a cloud which raised him up, and his mother clung to him and wept, and he said to her: Truly the Resurrection will bring us together. That was on the Night of Power (Laylat al-Qadr) at the Holy House (Bayt al-Maqdis), when he was thirty-three years old; and his mother lived six years after him. The two Shaykhs6 related the ḥadīth that he will descend near the Hour and will judge by the law of our Prophet, and will kill the Antichrist (al-Dajjāl) and the swine, break the cross and abolish the poll-tax (jizya). In the ḥadīth of Muslim, he will remain seven years; and in a ḥadīth from Abū Dāwūd al-Ṭayālisī, forty years; and he will die and the funeral prayer will be offered over him. So it may be that what is meant is the sum of his sojourn on earth before the raising and after it.
On 3:58
That (3:58), what has been mentioned of the affair of Jesus, We recite it, We relate it, to you, O Muḥammad, of the signs – a circumstantial qualifier (ḥāl) of the pronoun -hu in natlūhu, its governing element being the demonstrative sense contained in dhālika – and the wise Remembrance, the firmly composed (muḥkam), that is, the Qurʾān.
On 3:59
Truly the likeness of Jesus (3:59), his strange condition, with God is as the likeness of Adam, like his condition, [being] without a father; this is the likening of the strange to what is stranger still, so that it is more decisive against the opponent and more effective upon the soul. He created him, that is, Adam, that is, his mould, of dust, then said to him: Be, a human being, and he was, that is, and he came to be. So too with Jesus: He said to him “Be” – without a father – and he was.
On 3:60
The truth is from your Lord (3:60): the predicate of an elided subject, that is, the affair of Jesus [is the truth from your Lord]; so do not be of the doubters, those who are uncertain about it.
On 3:61
And whoever argues with you (3:61), disputes with you, of the Christians, concerning him after the knowledge that has come to you of his affair, say to them: Come, let us call our sons and your sons, our women and your women, ourselves and yourselves, so that we gather them together, then let us pray humbly, let us plead earnestly in supplication, and invoke the curse of God upon the liars, by saying: O God, curse the liar concerning the affair of Jesus. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) called the delegation of Najrān to this when they argued with him about it, and they said: Let us look into our affair, then we shall come to you. Those of sound judgment among them said: You know well his prophethood, and that no people has ever engaged in mutual imprecation with a prophet without perishing; so make peace with the man and depart. So they came to the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), who had come out with al-Ḥasan, al-Ḥusayn, Fāṭima and ʿAlī with him, and he said to them: When I supplicate, say “Amen”. But they refused to engage in the mutual cursing, and made terms with him on payment of the poll-tax (jizya). Abū Nuʿaym related it. And from Ibn ʿAbbās, who said: Had those who were to engage in the mutual imprecation gone out, they would have returned to find neither property nor family. And it is related: Had they gone out, they would have been consumed by fire.
On 3:62
Truly this (3:62), what has been mentioned, is indeed the narrative, the report, that is true, in which there is no doubt; and there is no – min being redundant – god but God; and truly God is indeed the Mighty in His dominion, the Wise in His handiwork.
On 3:63
And if they turn away (3:63), turn aside from belief, then truly God is Knowing of the corrupters, and He will requite them. Here the overt noun is placed in the position of the pronoun.
On 3:64
Say: O People of the Book (3:64), Jews and Christians, come to a word that is equitable – a verbal noun (maṣdar) meaning one whose purport is even – between us and you; it is that we worship none but God, and associate nothing with Him, and that none of us take others as lords besides God, as you have taken the rabbis and the monks. And if they turn away, turn aside from affirming God’s oneness, then say, you, to them: Bear witness that we are submitters, affirmers of God’s oneness.
About this text
This is a complete English rendering of Tafsīr al-Jalālayn on these verses, prepared for this website from the public-domain Arabic text (tafsir.app, src=jalalayn). Nothing is abridged: every opinion, every report with its chain of transmission, every verse of poetry and every grammatical note is translated. Qur’anic quotations are in bold; the translator’s own notes are confined to the numbered footnotes and identify names, terms and variant readings only. A second translator has not checked the rendering, and the Arabic is linked so that any passage can be compared. The modern editors’ apparatus is not part of the classical text and is not translated.
The family of ʿImrān (3:33-64): all commentaries · The classical commentaries
Notes
- waḍaʿtu, “what I have given birth to”, making the words part of her own speech. ↩
- The ḥadīth alluded to is that related by al-Bukhārī and Muslim: “There is no newborn but Satan touches it when it is born, so that it cries out screaming from his touch, except Mary and her son.” ↩
- That is, “and He made Zachariah her guardian”. ↩
- The particle ka-, “like”, in ka-hayʾati l-ṭayr. ↩
- ṣīṣiya: a spur, horn or hard protrusion. ↩
- Al-Bukhārī and Muslim. ↩