81 Page Notes

04 Surah An-Nisa (continued)

Page 81 - Related Hadith/Sunnah

4:20

4:21

4:22

4:23

Translation of the meaning by Sahih International.

Page 81 - Related Hadiths and Sunnah

Page 81 of the Quran contains Surah An-Nisa (4), verses 20 through 23. These verses establish foundational legal and moral frameworks concerning women's financial autonomy, marital rights, and the absolute prohibitions (Mahram relationships) of marriage.

The Prophetic Sunnah and historical Hadith literature provide direct contextual background (Asbab al-Nuzul) and legal elaboration for these specific verses.

1. Verses 20–21: Unconditional Retention of the Dowry (Mahr)

These verses state that if a husband chooses to divorce a wife to marry another, he is strictly forbidden from reclaiming any portion of her dowry (Mahr), even if he had given her a massive amount (Qintar / a treasure).

Contextual Hadith: The Prohibitive Rule of Umar ibn al-Khattab

A famous historical incident involving the Second Caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, directly draws upon this verse to establish Sunnah jurisprudence regarding the Mahr.

When Caliph Umar observed that people were driving up the cost of dowries, making marriage difficult, he stood on the pulpit and attempted to legally cap the maximum amount a woman could demand (Supriyadi et al., 2019). A woman from the congregation stood up and challenged him, reciting verse 20: "Even if you have given one of them a great amount (Qintar), take nothing back from it."

Upon hearing this scriptural rebuttal, Umar immediately retracted his decree and uttered his famous phrase: "The woman is right, and Umar is wrong" (Supriyadi et al., 2019). This established the Sunnah precedent that the state cannot arbitrarily cap a woman's right to her financial marriage contract, reinforcing her absolute economic autonomy (Karatas, 2023).

Related Sunnah Principles: Financial Non-Coercion

The phrase "strong covenant" (meethaqan ghaliza) in Verse 21 defines the marriage contract. In traditional Islamic jurisprudence (Fiqh), this verse forms the bedrock rule that a wife’s property is entirely separate from her husband’s (Khoirin, 2018). Sunnah traditions emphasize that a husband may not use or confiscate his wife's assets without her absolute, uncoerced consent (Khoirin, 2018).

2. Verse 22: Prohibition of Inheriting Step-Mothers

"And do not marry those [women] whom your fathers married..."

Historical Context (Asbab al-Nuzul)

In Pre-Islamic Arabia (Jahiliyyah), women were treated as inheritable property. If a man died, his son or closest male relative had a customary right to claim his widow as a wife without a new dowry, or marry her off to someone else and pocket her dowry (Siregar, 2024).

Sunnah compilations recorded by classical exegetes like Ibn Kathir and Al-Bukhari note that when a companion named Abu Qays ibn al-Aslat passed away, his son attempted to inherit and marry his stepmother. She went to the Prophet Muhammad to ask if this was permissible in Islam. Verse 22 was promptly revealed to abolish this exploitative practice, designating it as an abomination (fahishah) and permanently forbidding men from marrying their stepmothers (Ahmad, 2024).

3. Verse 23: The Core Matrix of Forbidden Marriages (Mahram)

Verse 23 is the definitive legislative text in the Quran outlining who a man is permanently forbidden from marrying based on lineage (blood relation), affinity (marriage), and fosterage (milk relation) (Ahmad, 2024). The Prophetic Sunnah significantly expanded and clarified the specific clauses of this verse:

Fosterage (Rada'ah) Expansion

The verse explicitly forbids "your [foster] mothers who nursed you and your sisters through nursing." The Prophet Muhammad explicitly extended this via a universally accepted, highly authentic Hadith narrated in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim:

"What is forbidden by reason of lineage is also forbidden by reason of fosterage."

This Sunnah decree expands the basic Quranic text, establishing that if a woman nurses an infant, she becomes his milk-mother, her husband becomes his milk-father, her biological children become his milk-siblings, and her sisters become his milk-aunts—completely replicating the blood-relation prohibitions listed in Verse 23 (Ahmad, 2024).

The Prohibition of Co-Marrying Two Sisters

Verse 23 concludes by forbidding a man from "having two sisters as wives at the same time."

The practical implementation of this is found in a Hadith recorded by Abu Dawood and Ibn Majah on the authority of Fayruz ad-Daylami. He approached the Prophet and said: "O Messenger of Allah, I have embraced Islam and I am married to two sisters." The Prophet Muhammad immediately instructed him: "Divorce whichever one of them you wish" (Ahmad, 2024). This Sunnah application confirmed that existing dual-sister marriages contracted before accepting Islam had to be immediately undone to conform to Verse 23.

References

• Ahmad, Y. A. H. (2024). Encyclopedia of Islamic Jurisprudence Concerning Muslim Women (Vol. 2). Kalamullah Publishers.

• Karataş, B. (2023). Deconstructing a discourse: A Western critique of the Orientalist stereotype of the “soulless Muslim woman”. DergiPark Academic, 420–425.

• Khoirin, N. (2018). Marriage treasure ownership in Arabic and Nusantara Fiqh perspectives. Addin, 12(2), 555-560.

• Siregar, I. (2024). Analysing the role and meaning of dowry in global wedding traditions. Journal of Muslim Detail, 114–118.

• Supriyadi, T., Julia, J., & Firdaus, E. (2019). The problems of gender equality: A reconstruction of Islamic doctrine. Journal of Social Studies Education Research, 10(2), 91-110.