An-Nisa

An-Nisa, "The Women," is the fourth surah — 176 verses revealed in Medina.¹ It is the Quran's principal surah of family law, and it takes its name from the extent of its legislation on the rights of women.

What it is about

The surah is about who is owed what, and by whom. It opens by grounding every human relationship in a single origin — "your Lord, who created you from one soul and created from it its mate" — and pairs consciousness of God with consciousness of kinship ties.² What follows works outward from there: the property of orphans, the shares of an estate, the terms of marriage and divorce, and then the duties of judges, rulers and witnesses. Family and courtroom are treated as one subject.

How it unfolds

The first long stretch is inheritance and guardianship. Orphans' property must be returned intact and never swapped for something worse. Then comes the surah's most consequential legislation: "For men is a share of what the parents and close relatives leave, and for women is a share of what the parents and close relatives leave, be it little or much — an obligatory share."³ Fixed fractions follow for daughters, parents, spouses and siblings, and the surah's final verse returns to complete them.

Marriage is next. The bridal gift is the wife's own, given "graciously." A list of prohibited degrees is set out. And a practice of the time is abolished outright: "it is not lawful for you to inherit women by compulsion" — followed by the instruction to "live with them in kindness," and the observation that "perhaps you dislike a thing and Allah makes therein much good."⁴

The surah then turns to marital discord, in one of the most discussed verses of the Quran. It opens by stating that "men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah has given one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance] from their wealth," and then sets out three steps where a husband fears a wife's nushuz — arrogance or defiance of the marriage: "[first] advise them; [then if they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them [lightly]. But if they obey you [once more], seek no means against them."⁵ (The bracketed words are the translators' clarifications, not the Arabic.) The very next verse widens the frame to a breakdown on either side: arbitrators are to be sent, "an arbitrator from his people and an arbitrator from her people. If they both desire reconciliation, Allah will cause it between them."⁶

Classical commentators ground the husband's charge in his obligation to provide, and read the steps as a sequence aimed at saving the marriage rather than punishing, each allowed only when the one before it has failed. They hedged the final step with restrictions — it must not injure or leave a mark, must avoid the face, and several early authorities described it as little more than symbolic. They drew these limits from the Prophet ﷺ himself, who in his Farewell Sermon allowed it only "but not severely,"¹⁴ and whose own conduct pointed further: 'A'isha reported that he "never beat anyone with his hand, neither a woman nor a servant,"¹⁵ and of men who did beat their wives he said, "They are not the best among you."¹⁶ Contemporary scholars differ over the verse's final clause — some keep the classical reading with its restrictions, others read the Arabic verb differently or hold that the Prophet's example effectively closes the permission. This remains a live difference of scholarly opinion rather than a settled matter.

Then the surah widens into general ethics in a single sweeping verse — worship God alone, and do good to parents, relatives, orphans, the needy, the near neighbor, the neighbor farther away, the companion at one's side, the traveler, and those in one's charge.⁷

From there it becomes a surah of public justice. Trusts must be rendered to their owners and judgment between people must be just.⁸ Obedience is owed to God, to the Messenger and to those in authority — but disputes are referred back to God and the Messenger.⁹ A long central passage warns against defending someone known to be guilty simply because he is one's own, and the demand reaches its sharpest form later: "be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for Allah, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives."¹¹

Between these sections the surah deals with the community's fractures: the hypocrites who wait to see which side wins, the obligation to fight for "the oppressed among men, women, and children," and a caution against declaring someone an unbeliever in order to take his property — investigate first. It also poses a question that has been central to Muslim thinking about the Quran ever since: "Then do they not reflect upon the Quran? If it had been from [any] other than Allah, they would have found within it much contradiction."¹⁰

The surah closes with the People of the Scripture. It denies the crucifixion — "they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him" — and states that God raised Jesus to Himself.¹² It lists the prophets who received revelation before Muhammad ﷺ, and ends its address with a plea against doctrinal excess: "O People of the Scripture, do not commit excess in your religion... The Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, was but a messenger of Allah... And do not say, 'Three.'"¹³

Key themes

Rights as obligations owed to the weak. Orphans, widows, wives and the oppressed are the surah's recurring subjects, and each passage is addressed to those with power over them.

Justice that costs something. The surah's test of justice is whether it survives contact with self-interest, family loyalty and tribal advantage.

One human origin. The opening verse's "one soul" frames the legislation that follows as a matter of shared humanity rather than of tribal arrangement.

Coherence as evidence. The invitation to search the Quran for contradiction is offered as a proof of its origin.

Why it matters

An-Nisa is the foundation of Islamic inheritance law, which remains among the most detailed and widely applied bodies of Muslim law today, and it is where the Quran establishes women as heirs in their own right rather than as property passing with an estate. It also contains 4:34, the verse most often raised in questions about Islam and marriage, which Muslim scholarship has always read alongside the Prophet's ﷺ own example. It is equally the surah Muslims return to on the ethics of testimony and judgment. For readers coming from Christianity, it also contains the Quran's most direct statements on the crucifixion and on the Trinity. To read An-Nisa in Arabic with translations and recitation, open it on Quran.com.