Maʿālim al-tanzīl, by Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥusayn ibn Masʿūd al-Baghawī (d. 516 AH / 1122 CE). A commentary of the school of ḥadīth, valued for its restraint; it keeps the early reports and little else.
The complete commentary on She who guarded her chastity (21:91), covering 21:91.
On 21:91
So We answered him and granted him John (21:90), as a son, and We set right for him his wife, that is, We made her able to bear children after she had been barren; so said most of the commentators. Some of them said: She was ill-tempered, and He set her right for him by granting her a good temper.
They, meaning the prophets whom He has named in this sūrah, used to hasten to good works and call upon Us in longing, in hope, and in dread, in fear: longing for the mercy of God and dread of the punishment of God; and they were humble before Us, that is, lowly. Qatādah said: submissive to the command of God. Mujāhid said: Humility is the abiding fear in the heart.
And she who guarded her chastity (21:91), kept it from what is forbidden; He means Mary daughter of ʿImrān. And We breathed into her of Our Spirit, that is, We commanded Gabriel until he breathed into the opening of her shift, and by that breath We brought the Messiah into being in her womb; and He attributed the Spirit to Himself as an honour to Jesus (peace be upon him). And We made her and her son a sign for the worlds, that is, a proof of the perfection of Our power to create a child without a father. He did not say “two signs”, though they are two signs, because the meaning of the words is: We made their condition and their affair a sign; and because the sign in the two of them was one, namely that she brought him forth without a male.
His words, Mighty and Majestic: This your community (21:92), that is, your religious community and your religion, is one community, that is, one religion, which is Islam; so He declared void every religion other than Islam. The root sense of “community” (ummah) is the group that is bent on a single aim, so the revealed law was made “one community” because its people are united upon a single aim. “Community” takes the accusative as a detached qualifier.
And I am your Lord, so worship Me.
But they split up their affair among themselves; all shall return to Us. (93) So whoever does righteous deeds while a believer, there shall be no denial of his endeavour, and We are recording it for him. (94) And it is forbidden for any town We have destroyed that they shall not return, (95) until, when Gog and Magog are let loose and they come swarming down from every height. (96)
But they split up their affair among themselves (21:93), that is, they differed in religion and became sects and factions. Al-Kalbī said: They divided their religion among themselves, cursing one another and disowning one another. “Splitting up” (taqaṭṭuʿ) here has the sense of “cutting up” (taqṭīʿ). All shall return to Us, and We shall recompense them for their deeds.
So whoever does righteous deeds while a believer, there shall be no denial of his endeavour (21:94): his endeavour shall not be denied nor made void; rather, it shall be acknowledged with thanks and rewarded. And We are recording it for him: preserving his deed. It was also said: The meaning of “thanks” on the part of God is recompense.
And it is forbidden for any town (21:95). Ḥamzah, al-Kisāʾī and Abū Bakr read wa-ḥirmun with kasrah on the ḥāʾ and without alif, while the rest read it with alif, ḥarāmun; they are two dialectal forms, like ḥill and ḥalāl.
Ibn ʿAbbās said: The meaning of the verse is: and it is forbidden for any town, that is, the people of any town, We have destroyed, that they should return after destruction; on this view the “not” is redundant. Others said: “forbidden” has the meaning of “incumbent”, and on this view the “not” stands in its own meaning; its sense is: it is incumbent upon the people of any town We have destroyed that they shall not return to this world.
Al-Zajjāj said: Its meaning is: and it is forbidden for the people of any town We have destroyed, that is, whose destruction We have decreed, that their deeds should be accepted, because they do not return, that is, they do not repent. The proof of this meaning is that He said in the verse before it: So whoever does righteous deeds while a believer, there shall be no denial of his endeavour, that is, his deed is accepted, and then mentioned this verse immediately after it and made plain that the unbeliever’s deed is not accepted.
His words, Mighty and Majestic: Until, when they are let loose (21:96). Ibn ʿĀmir, Abū Jaʿfar and Yaʿqūb read futtiḥat with doubling, to express abundance, and the others read it without doubling. Gog and Magog: He means that the barrier is opened to release Gog and Magog, and they from every height, that is, every rise and hill, the ḥadab being the elevated place, come swarming down, hastening down from the hillocks and hills like the loping of the wolf, which is the swiftness of its gait. They differed about this pronoun. One group said: Gog and Magog are meant by it, as shown by what we have related from al-Nawwās ibn Samʿān, from the Messenger of God (peace and blessings be upon him), that he said: “And God will send Gog and Magog, and they will come swarming down from every height.” Another group said: He meant all created beings, that is, that they come out of their graves; this is supported by the reading of Mujāhid, “and they from every grave (jadath)”, with jīm and thāʾ, as He said: And behold, from the graves to their Lord they come swarming (36:51).
Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī informed us: ʿAbd al-Ghāfir ibn Muḥammad al-Fārisī informed us: Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā al-Julūdī informed us: Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Sufyān informed us: Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj informed us: Abū Khaythamah Zuhayr ibn Ḥarb informed us: Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah informed us, from Furāt al-Qazzāz, from Abū al-Ṭufayl, from Ḥudhayfah ibn Usayd al-Ghifārī, who said: The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) looked in on us while we were talking among ourselves, and said: What are you discussing? They said: We are discussing the Hour. He said: “It will not come until you see ten signs before it,” and he mentioned the smoke, the Antichrist, the beast, the rising of the sun from its place of setting, the descent of Jesus son of Mary, Gog and Magog, and three sinkings of the earth: a sinking in the west, a sinking in the east and a sinking in the Arabian peninsula; “and the last of these is a fire that will come out of Yemen, driving the people to their place of gathering.”
About this text
This is a complete English rendering of Maʿālim al-tanzīl on these verses, prepared for this website from the public-domain Arabic text (tafsir.app, src=baghawi). 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.
She who guarded her chastity (21:91): all commentaries · The classical commentaries