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 The birth of Jesus (19:16-37), covering 19:16 to 19:34-37.
On 19:16
And dutiful to his parents (19:14), that is, devoted to them, gentle with them and good to them.
And he was not arrogant or disobedient. “The arrogant” (al-jabbār) is the proud; and it was said that “the arrogant” is one who strikes and kills in anger; and “the disobedient” (al-ʿaṣī) is the one who disobeys.
And peace be upon him (19:15), that is, safety be his, the day he was born, and the day he dies, and the day he is raised up alive. Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah said: The most desolate that a man can be is in these three states: the day he is born, when he comes out of what he was in; the day he dies, when he sees people he had never beheld; and the day he is raised up, when he sees himself in a gathering the like of which he has never seen. So John was singled out for safety in these places.
His words, Mighty and Majestic: And mention in the Book, in the Qurʾān, Mary, when she withdrew, drew aside and secluded herself, from her people, from her kinsfolk, to an eastern place (19:16), that is, a place in the house on the side facing the east. It was a winter day of severe cold, and she sat in a sunny spot delousing her head.
It was also said: She had become clean from menstruation and went to wash herself.
Al-Ḥasan said: And it is from this that the Christians took the east as their direction of prayer.
On 19:17-20
And she took, set up, apart from them a screen (19:17). Ibn ʿAbbās (may God be pleased with them both) said: a curtain.
It was also said: She sat behind a wall. Muqātil said: behind a mountain.
ʿIkrimah said: Mary used to stay in the sanctuary, and when she menstruated she would move to the house of her maternal aunt, and when she became clean she would return to the sanctuary. While she was washing herself after menstruation, having stripped herself, Gabriel appeared to her in the form of a beardless youth with a bright face, curly hair and a well-proportioned frame; and that is His words:
Then We sent to her Our Spirit, meaning Gabriel (peace be upon him), and he appeared to her as a well-proportioned man. It was also said that what is meant by the Spirit is Jesus (peace be upon him), who came in the form of a man and she conceived him; but the first is more correct. When Mary saw Gabriel making towards her, she called out to him from afar, and she said: I seek refuge in the All-Merciful from you, if you are God-fearing (19:18), that is, a believer and obedient.
If it is asked: Refuge is sought only from the wicked, so how did she say: I seek refuge in the All-Merciful from you, if you are God-fearing?
It is answered: This is like someone saying: If you are a believer, do not wrong me; that is, your faith ought to restrain you from wrongdoing. So it is here.
Its meaning is: and your fear of God ought to restrain you from wickedness.
He said, Gabriel said to her: I am only a messenger of your Lord, that I may grant you (19:19). Nāfiʿ and the people of Basra read li-yahaba laki with yāʾ, that is, that your Lord may grant you; the others read li-ahaba laki, attributing the act to the messenger, although the gift is from God, Exalted, because he was sent with it.
A pure boy: a righteous child, pure from sins.
She said, Mary said: How, from where, shall I have a boy when no man has touched me, no husband has come near me, and I have not been unchaste? (19:20), a wanton woman. She means that a child comes either from marriage or from fornication, and neither of the two had taken place here.
On 19:21-22
He said, Gabriel said: So it shall be (19:21). It was said that its meaning is: it is as you say, O Mary, but your Lord has said; and it was said: thus has your Lord said: It is easy for Me, that is, the creation of a child without a father; and that We may make him a sign, a token, for mankind, and a proof of Our power, and a mercy from Us, and a blessing for whoever follows him in his religion; and it was, that, a matter decreed, decided and settled, which is neither turned back nor altered.
His words, Mighty and Majestic: So she conceived him (19:22). It was said that Gabriel lifted her shift and breathed into its opening, and she conceived when she put it on.
It was also said: He stretched out the opening of her shift with his finger and then breathed into the opening.
It was also said: He breathed into the sleeve of her garment. And it was said: into her mouth.
It was also said: Gabriel (peace be upon him) breathed a breath from afar, and the breath reached her and she conceived Jesus at once. And she withdrew with him, that is, she drew aside with the pregnancy and secluded herself, to a far place, far from her people.
Ibn ʿAbbās (may God be pleased with them both) said: The farthest end of the valley, which is the valley of Bethlehem, fleeing from her people lest they reproach her for giving birth without a husband.
They differed as to the length of her pregnancy and the time of her delivery. Ibn ʿAbbās (may God be pleased with them both) said: The conception and the birth took place in a single hour.
It was also said: The length of her pregnancy was nine months, like the pregnancy of other women.
It was also said: The length of her pregnancy was eight months, and that was another sign, because no child born at eight months survives, yet Jesus was born after this period and lived.
It was also said: She gave birth after six months.
Muqātil ibn Sulaymān said: Mary conceived him in an hour, he was formed in an hour, and she gave birth to him in an hour, when the sun declined on that same day, she being a girl of ten years, and she had menstruated twice before she conceived Jesus.
On 19:23
And it drove her, that is, it compelled her and brought her, the pangs of childbirth, which are the pain of labour, to the trunk of the palm tree (19:23). It was a dry palm tree in the desert, in the depth of winter, with no fronds on it.
It was also said: She took refuge at it in order to lean against it and hold on to it through the pain of childbirth. She said: Would that I had died before this: she wished for death out of shame before people and fear of disgrace; and had been a thing forgotten. Ḥamzah and Ḥafṣ read nasyan with fatḥah on the nūn, and the rest with kasrah; they are two dialectal forms, like al-watr and al-witr, and al-jisr and al-jasr. It means the thing forgotten, and al-nasy in the language is everything that is cast away, forgotten and not mentioned because of its insignificance.
Forgotten, that is, abandoned. Qatādah said: Something that is neither known nor mentioned. ʿIkrimah, al-Ḍaḥḥāk and Mujāhid said: A carcass thrown away. And it was said: She means, had I never been created.
On 19:24
Then he called to her from beneath her (19:24). Abū Jaʿfar, Nāfiʿ, Ḥamzah, al-Kisāʾī and Ḥafṣ read min taḥtihā with kasrah on the mīm and the tāʾ, meaning Gabriel (peace be upon him): Mary was on a hillock and Gabriel was behind the hillock, below her, and he called to her.
The others read it with fatḥah on the mīm and the tāʾ1, and they too intended Gabriel (peace be upon him): he called to her from the foot of the mountain.
It was also said: It was Jesus who, when he came out of his mother’s womb, called to her: Do not grieve. This is the view of Mujāhid and al-Ḥasan.
The first is the view of Ibn ʿAbbās (may God be pleased with them both), al-Suddī, Qatādah, al-Ḍaḥḥāk and a group: that the caller was Gabriel, who, when he heard her words and recognised her distress, called to her: Do not grieve.
Your Lord has placed beneath you a rivulet. “The rivulet” (al-sarī) is the small stream.
It was also said: “beneath you” means that God placed it under your command: if you order it to flow, it flows, and if you order it to hold back, it holds back.
Ibn ʿAbbās (may God be pleased with them both) said: Gabriel (peace be upon him), or, as it is also said, Jesus (peace and blessings be upon him), struck the earth with his foot, and a spring of sweet water appeared and flowed.
It was also said: There was a dry stream there, in which God, Glorified and Exalted, made the water flow, and the dry palm tree came to life, put forth leaves, bore fruit and ripened fresh dates.
Al-Ḥasan said: “beneath you a sarī” means Jesus, and by God he was a noble (sarī) servant, meaning exalted.
On 19:25-26
And shake towards you, that is, Mary was told: move, the trunk of the palm tree (19:25). The Arabs say hazzahu and hazza bihi, just as one says ḥazza raʾsahu and ḥazza bi-raʾsihi, and amdada al-ḥabla and amdada bihi. It will let fall upon you: the well-known reading is with fatḥah on the tāʾ and the qāf and doubling of the sīn, that is, tatasāqaṭu, one of the two tāʾs being assimilated into the sīn; that is, the palm tree will let fall upon you fresh dates. Ḥamzah read the sīn without doubling and dropped the tāʾ which the others assimilated.
Ḥafṣ read it with ḍammah on the tāʾ and kasrah on the qāf, without doubling, on the pattern of tufāʿilu; tusāqiṭu has the meaning of asqaṭa, and the feminine form is on account of the palm tree.
Yaʿqūb read yassāqaṭu with yāʾ and doubling, referring it back to the trunk.
Fresh ripe dates: gathered dates. It was also said that al-janī is that which has reached its full ripeness and whose time of gathering has come. Al-Rabīʿ ibn Khuthaym said: In my view there is nothing better for the woman in childbed than fresh dates, nor anything better for the sick than honey. His words, Glorified and Exalted: So eat and drink (19:26), that is, eat, O Mary, of the fresh dates and drink of the water of the stream, and be comforted, literally “cool your eye”, that is, be of good cheer. It was also said: Let your eye be cooled by your child Jesus. One says: May God cool your eye, meaning: may your heart meet with what pleases you, so that your eye rests from looking at anything else. It was also said: “God cooled his eye” means He put it to sleep; one says qarra yaqirru when a thing becomes still.
It was also said: When the eye weeps from joy the tears are cool, and when it weeps from grief the tears are hot; and from this it is said: May God cool his eye, and: May God heat his eye.
And if you see any human being, that is, taray, upon which the nūn of emphasis has entered, and the yāʾ takes kasrah because of the meeting of two unvowelled letters.
Its meaning is: if you see any human being who asks you about your child, say: I have vowed to the All-Merciful a fast, that is, a silence; and so Ibn Masʿūd (may God be pleased with him) used to read it.
Fasting (ṣawm) in the language is abstention from food, drink and speech.
Al-Suddī said: Among the Children of Israel, whoever wished to exert himself in devotion would fast from speech as he fasted from food, and would not speak until evening.
It was also said that God, Exalted, commanded her to say this by a gesture.
It was also said that He commanded her to say this much aloud, and then to refrain from speech after it.
So I shall not speak today to any human being. It is said: She used to speak to the angels and not speak to human beings.
On 19:27-28
Then she brought him to her people, carrying him (19:27). It was said that she gave birth to him and then carried him at once to her people.
Al-Kalbī said: Joseph the carpenter carried Mary and her son Jesus (peace be upon them both) to a cave, and she remained forty days until she was clean from the bleeding of childbirth; then Mary (peace be upon her) carried him to her people, and Jesus (peace be upon him) spoke to her on the way, saying: O mother, rejoice, for I am the servant of God and His Messiah. When she came in to her family with the child, they wept and grieved, for they were a righteous household. They said: O Mary, you have done a monstrous thing: a grave and abominable thing. Abū ʿUbaydah said: Every extraordinary matter, whether a wonder or a deed, is farī.
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said of ʿUmar: “I have never seen a master who does his work as he does (yafrī fariyyahu)”, that is, who performs his deed.
O sister of Aaron (19:28). He means: O you who resemble Aaron. Qatādah and others said: Aaron was a righteous and devout man among the Children of Israel. It is related that on the day he died, forty thousand men, every one of them named Aaron, from among the Children of Israel followed his funeral, besides the rest of the people. They likened her to him in the sense of: we thought you were like him in righteousness. Brotherhood by lineage is not meant by it, just as God, Exalted, said: The squanderers are the brothers of the devils (17:27), that is, their likes.
Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Qāhir informed us: ʿAbd al-Ghāfir ibn Muḥammad informed us: Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā informed us: Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Sufyān informed us: Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj related to us: Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Numayr related to us: Ibn Idrīs related to us, from his father, from Simāk ibn Ḥarb, from ʿAlqamah ibn Wāʾil, from al-Mughīrah ibn Shuʿbah, who said: When I came to Najrān they questioned me, saying: You recite O sister of Aaron, yet Moses was so-and-so long before Jesus! When I came to the Messenger of God (peace and blessings be upon him) I asked him about that, and he said: “They used to name themselves after their prophets and the righteous who were before them.”
Al-Kalbī said: Aaron was Mary’s brother on her father’s side, and he was the most exemplary man among the Children of Israel.
Al-Suddī said: They meant by it only Aaron the brother of Moses, because she was of his descent, just as one says to a man of Tamīm: O brother of Tamīm.
It was also said: Aaron was a wicked man among the Children of Israel, greatly given to wickedness, and they likened her to him.
Your father, ʿImrān, was not a man of evil. Ibn ʿAbbās (may God be pleased with them both) said: a fornicator; nor was your mother, Ḥannah, unchaste, that is, a fornicatress; so from where have you got this child?
On 19:29
Then she pointed, Mary pointed, to him, that is, to Jesus (peace be upon him), meaning: speak to him (19:29).
Ibn Masʿūd (may God be pleased with him) said: Since she had no argument, she pointed to him so that his speech might be her argument.
In the story it is related that when she pointed to him the people grew angry and said: On top of what you have done, do you mock us?
They said: How shall we speak to one who is in the cradle, a child?, that is, one who is in the cradle, which was her lap.
It was also said: It is the cradle itself, and kāna (“was”) has the meaning of “is”. Abū ʿUbaydah said: kāna is redundant, that is: how shall we speak to a child in the cradle? Kāna may occur in speech as a filler with no meaning, as in His words Was I ever anything but a human being, a messenger? (17:93), that is: am I anything but?
Al-Suddī said: When Jesus heard their words he left off suckling and turned to face them.
It was also said: When she pointed to him, he left the breast, leaned on his left side, turned to face them, and began to gesture with his right hand:
On 19:30-33
He said: I am the servant of God (19:30). Wahb said: Zachariah came to her during her dispute with the Jews and said to Jesus: Speak your argument, if you have been commanded to. Then Jesus (peace be upon him) said, being forty days old, though Muqātil said: rather, it was on the day he was born: I am the servant of God. He confessed of himself servanthood to God, Mighty and Majestic, as the first thing he spoke, lest he be taken as a god. He has given me the Book and made me a prophet. It was said that its meaning is: He will give me the Book and make me a prophet.
It was also said: This is a report of what was written for him in the Preserved Tablet, just as the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was asked: When were you a prophet? and he said: “I was a prophet when Adam was between the spirit and the body.”
The majority said: He was given the Gospel while he was a small child, and he had the understanding of grown men.
From al-Ḥasan it is related that he said: He was inspired with the Torah while he was in his mother’s womb.
And He has made me blessed wherever I may be (19:31), that is, of great benefit wherever I turn. Mujāhid said: a teacher of good. ʿAṭāʾ said: calling to God, to His oneness and His worship. It was also said: blessed for whoever follows me.
And He has enjoined on me prayer and almsgiving, that is, He commanded me to perform them both.
If it is asked: Jesus had no wealth, so how could he be commanded to give alms?
It is answered: Its meaning is: almsgiving, had I wealth. It was also said: the doing of abundant good.
So long as I live. And dutiful to my mother (19:32), that is, and He has made me dutiful to my mother; and He has not made me arrogant or wretched, that is, disobedient to his Lord. It was said: “the wretched” (al-shaqī) is one who sins and does not repent.
And peace be upon me the day I was born (19:33), that is, safety at birth from the prodding of Satan.
And the day I die,
that is, at death, safety from associating partners with God; and the day I am raised up alive, safety from the terrors. When Jesus spoke to them with this, they knew Mary’s innocence. Then Jesus (peace be upon him) fell silent and did not speak after that until he reached the age at which children speak.
On 19:34-37
That is Jesus son of Mary (19:34). Al-Zajjāj said: that is, the one who said “I am the servant of God” is Jesus son of Mary. The word of truth: Ibn ʿĀmir, ʿĀṣim and Yaʿqūb read qawla al-ḥaqqi with the lām in the accusative, which is the accusative of the verbal noun, that is: he spoke the word of truth; concerning which they are in doubt, that is, concerning which they differ: one says he is the son of God, another says he is God, and another says he is a lying sorcerer.
The others read it with the lām in the nominative, meaning: he is the word of truth, that is, this speech is the word of truth; the word is annexed to the truth, as He said “the truth of certainty” and “the promise of truth”.
It was also said that it is an epithet of Jesus son of Mary, meaning: that is Jesus son of Mary, the word of God; “the Truth” is God, concerning whom they are in doubt, doubting and differing and saying what is not true. Then He denied of Himself the having of a child, saying: It is not for God to take any child (19:35), that is, taking a child is not among His attributes. It was also said: the lām is transposed, that is: God was not one to take any child. Glory be to Him! When He decrees a matter, when He wills to bring a matter into being, He only says to it: Be! and it is. And God is my Lord and your Lord (19:36): the people of the Ḥijāz and Abū ʿAmr read anna Allāha with fatḥah on the alif, referring back to His words and He has enjoined on me prayer and almsgiving and “that God is my Lord and your Lord”; the people of Syria and Kufa and Yaʿqūb read it with kasrah on the alif, as the beginning of a new sentence. So worship Him. This is a straight path. Then the factions differed among themselves (19:37), meaning the Christians; they were called factions because they split into three parties over the matter of Jesus: the Nestorians, the Melkites and the Jacobites.
So woe to those who disbelieve from the witnessing of a tremendous day, meaning the Day of Resurrection.
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.
The birth of Jesus (19:16-37): all commentaries · The classical commentaries
Notes
- That is, man taḥtahā, “he who was beneath her called to her”. ↩